Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 18-minute public Q&A, Ven Robina Courtin addresses pressing questions: abortion and karma, the place of women in Buddhism, and how chronic illness traces to past actions. She explains how karma ripens—negative deeds manifesting as habit, harmful experience, and illness—and how purification works through sincere regret, dedicated practice, and firm resolve to change. The teaching’s heart is emptiness. Using a Starbucks cup as her example, Courtin traces its dependence on a designer’s mind, materials from mountains, countless workers and their ancestors stretching infinitely backward—the entire universe. Understanding dependent arising, she explains, loosens the grip of the false view that things exist independently and solidly, revealing emptiness. She concludes with reflections on humility in spiritual teachers and dedicatory prayers for all present. Accessible to those new to Buddhism but philosophically rigorous.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 2000 12 11 PT.mp3
UUID: f00464a1-9372-4c6a-b5fd-fad4525bd187
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Public Talks (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2000-12-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.0 minutes
Words: ~3,284
Yes. Can you talk about abortion? Mhmm. Sure. Well, like I said before, Buddhism would say that that human being began at the first moment of conception.
How come it even developed into a day old fetus? It’s because of the presence of a consciousness in that fetus, that little egg and sperm, okay. So that particular consciousness had a karmic connection with that mother. I mean I had an abortion when I was twenty three. And I was very curious, I know at that point, it was an interesting experience.
I didn’t think about all this stuff before then, but I remember vividly the day, the moment, the bloke, this Australian bloke in London, I remember the day, and I knew something went inside me, and I never thought those kind of thoughts before, but it was a very strong experience. So that’s what Buddhism says, that consciousness kind of zapped into you at that moment, so it’s an actual human being. So killing is one of the most negative things we can do, it’s obvious. No one wants to die, it’s one of the most strong negative things, harmful things we can do. So basically, I killed a human being.
But then in Buddhism we also have practices which we do every day. Because karma is created by me, then I can purify it. I can change it by regretting, sincerely regretting the harm I’ve done, by doing a certain practice and by making determination not to do again. That in Buddhist terms is the actual process of change, process of purification. So one of the first steps is strong regret.
It’s interesting. We tend to think that as a neurotic kind of guilt. That’s not the point. Regret is like a wholesome recognition of something that I have done, a sense of responsibility. And then not just thinking, oh I am so bad, am so terrible, but now what can I do about it?
That is changing, practices, doing certain actions, and then making determination not to do again. This is the process of purification in Buddhism. So the point is, it’s a human being, if you abort it, you kill it. It’s just a fact, know. There can be millions of reasons why we do things, every person’s action is uniquely different.
So in general, killing a human being, killing any creature is said to be quite a negative imprint in my consciousness and so therefore one needs to pull it out before it ripens. Is that the point you are talking or was it had a particular point? Just generally. That’s okay, that answers your question then? Alright.
Yep. I understand. In Tibet it was typically Asian, percent of the monastics were male, were the major monasteries, there were big monastic universities they had, mainly there were the teachers, was just the culture, was Asian, you know? But in general Buddhism, this is something for me very important when I first became a Buddhist because was a feminist, right? And they say check up, so I really knew I had to check carefully.
But if there was something innately against female, how could I possibly be a Buddhist to be demented, you know? So here I am twenty four years later, so far so good because I really feel convinced that what Buddha is saying is that consciousness itself. But when it first goes into the womb, or when it leaves the body at death, it doesn’t possess any male or female nature, it doesn’t even possess human nature. It possesses the potentials. And so ultimately, we’ve all got the same potential to be a Buddha.
It’s just that at different times and space and cultures, it’s more difficult maybe. I mean with great respect to say Arab cultures where you have, like in Saudi Arabia where you you know, or even in India, even the Hindus, you know. Until fairly recently, I think it’s probably still done in some places. When hubby dies, they chuck you alive on the fire with him. Okay, excuse me, I’d rather not be born a female in India if that’s the case.
But it doesn’t mean females are no good, it just means certain cultural situations might not be so appropriate. So okay, in Tibet, because it’s Asian, it was like that. But I’m seeing that in the West, like in the organisation I’m part of, there’s like a couple of hundred monks and nuns. Almost from the beginning, in the early seventies, there’s been an equal number. According to your own potentials, they give you jobs here, you do jobs, so you know, teaching. You do whatever your capabilities are according to your capabilities. Any more burning questions? Yes That’s a very good point, Thank you very much.
She wants to know why we get chronic illnesses. Well the Buddha I didn’t let me finish more about karma. Okay, how karma ripens, okay? First of all, like I said, is the one we call it actions similar to the cause. So if you look into your own personality, all the things you think and feel, and why you do certain things, why you lie, why you steal, why you love, why you’re generous, all this, that’s all past habit, okay?
It’s way one from the past. In other words, you look into what you are, it tells you what you’ve done before. So then you have to decide if it’s moral or not, so you then try to change it. That’s one level of karma. Like I said before about Celia and the punch, everything that happens to you is also the result of your past karma.
All the punches that come and the kisses that come, whatever it is. So now let’s use an example. The action of killing, this is an example of one negative action. So the action of killing, it ripens in these different ways, I must mention two so far. First of all, it ripens in terms of the action similar to the cause.
So if I look into this, look into the world, and look at the people who since their tiny kids have killed ants, and killed snails, and killed the fish, and killed this, or killed humans or whatever, that’s because they’ve done it before, and they haven’t purified that particular aspect of it, so they continue to kill. First, okay, that’s the first one. Now, the way it ripens as the experience similar to the cause is that you get killed. That fetus that got aborted had created the cause to be killed by having killed before. It doesn’t mean you get everyone every time in every life.
But this is one of the second, another way that it ripens. So another way that killing ripens is you die young. So the fetus also got that one, with a vengeance. Didn’t even get out of the womb yet, you know. You with me?
The other way the karma of killing can ripen is as illnesses. Any kind of illness, but especially serious chronic illnesses. It can be the fruit of past killing. Or in general harm. So this is, I mean Tibetan medicine is a very sophisticated system, quite similar to the Chinese actually, the way they diagnose, but it’s totally related to the psychological explanation of karma in the mind.
So all illnesses are due to certain kinds of past actions. And so then by how one would heal oneself in this life, which is certainly possible, one by taking certain kinds of medicines, all these different kinds of herbs and stuff, and then also by doing certain practices. And then by doing this kind of regretting the process of purification by strongly stopping harming others, by actively benefiting others. I mean one of the common practices that many Lamas would give people is to save the lives of animals, example, to go to the bait shop, buy the worms, you know, and release them. So this is a powerful way to actually purify the karma of killing, to save the lives of animals.
Even the life of one tiny little ant there, this is said to be hugely purifying. Or even doing, even for example doing meditations. Lama Zopa talks of many cases of people, but he has given meditations to do, who have actually healed themselves of cancer, all sorts of things. So one example he always gives is this young guy who had HIV. And he was given a certain meditation practice on compassion, to meditate on the compassion of the suffering of others.
So it was so huge, the compassion he experienced, that he cured himself of HIV. He was cured of AIDS. Does it make sense? Yes, yes, all of that, yes. In words, the whole idea of karma, like I said, is that we are the one who is responsible for whatever the deal we get.
Whether the body is mangled, whether it is healthy, whether it is not. If we label it suffering, if what the human body naturally is is kind of limited, it doesn’t mean we should hate ourselves, it just means it is due to past karma. So if have got it’s like, yes, so it can be that if people continually steal from you, well don’t be surprised you must have stolen before. So if you are ill, you have used your body to harm others. So it’s now, you have thwarted in your wishes to use it well.
It’s a very organic kind of idea and it’s not a question of punishment. No one is doing it to us. We do it ourselves, this is the idea which gives us much more ability for us to kind of wear it and own it, rather than feeling bad, you know. Do you see? Yes?
My goodness, in the quarter to ten, he wants to know about emptiness. But what if you can bear it? You can all leave if you want to, but I’ll talk about emptiness, okay? Okay, I’ll do my best. Well Lama, it’s very interesting, Lama Tsongkhapa, one of the fourteenth century Lama’s of this tradition I am part of, the Geluk tradition, he is kind of saying, Honey, don’t worry about emptiness, let’s look into which is sort of a way of describing about how things don’t exist, it’s a bit abstract for us.
So the best way to understand that, he says, is by looking into how things do exist. So basically Buddha is saying that everything that exists has two modes of existence. There’s the ultimate, the final, the real, the absolute way that everything actually exists. And this weird word emptiness is the shorthand for that. I’ll talk about it in a sec.
Then you’ve got how things actually do exist, which is conventional reality. So things do have a conventional nature. So in other words, you know, my Starbucks cup. Ultimately, I’m say some words and I’ll describe. Ultimately, it is empty of being, it is lacking, absent of having a cup, true cup nature.
Whereas Buddha is saying, the ignorance, the instinct of ignorance in my mind completely projects onto it, real existing from its own side out there, true cup nature. Okay, it’s empty of that. So okay, now he says don’t try to what is empty? What is empty? What does it mean?
You know, let’s look at how it does exist. Okay, there are three levels of this. And the shorthand for how for the conventional reality of cup is that it is a dependent arising. This is the flip side of emptiness. So let’s look at dependent arising.
Okay, that is this cup arises, comes into being in dependence upon countless, in fact, causes and conditions. I remember when I first studied this stuff years ago, the Lama used Robina as the example, which is why I remembered of course, okay? And he said, it can be said that the existence of Robina, everything in the universe before Robina is a valid cause and a condition for the existence of Rubina. I didn’t explain it, but I remember thinking, wow, that’s pretty cosmic, know, I couldn’t get that. Well it’s taken me twenty three years to get it, okay?
So let me explain. And you listen to this, this is truth, this is not religious, this is reality. Okay, so cup, to say it again, cup arises, comes into being in dependence upon countless causes and conditions. That cup is nothing other than all those causes and conditions, but that you can’t find cup among any one of those causes and conditions. So what are the causes and conditions, okay?
Well the very first one, I want to start asking you all questions and debate, will take too long, so I’ll give you the answer. The very first cause and condition for this cup, we all have to agree, is the person in whose mind they first visualised it. This particular design, with the Starbucks on there, the hole there, the plastic there, the metal there. It didn’t fall out of a tree looking like this, did it? You with me?
It came out of a human being’s mind, okay? So there’s that human being. Now we all agree without that human being’s mind visualizing this cup, there wouldn’t possibly be this cup in my hand. Even the ones that are the brothers of it or the sisters of it. So okay, now we do know, don’t we, that that person had mother.
You agree? Now, without that mother there wouldn’t be this person. Without that person I wouldn’t have this cup. So that mother is a valid cause and condition for the existence of this cup, albeit an indirect one. Then she had a mother.
Then she had a mother. You can go back back tracking that one, and you can’t find the beginning of all the mums, can you? Any one of which missing, the whole house of cards collapses. Now let’s take another track. Let’s say this person used a pencil to draw this on a piece of paper.
Okay? Agree? That pencil that came from trees and mountains, then there’s a tree, and someone chopped it down. The axe, the wood that was the handle on the axe, the metal from the mountain, the people who mined the metal, all the people, all their mothers, all those sentient beings that died, all of which are part of the whole story of this cup. Now you can see, you go and you are going to end up in the whole universe, you can’t find a beginning.
This is a truthful statement. Now mostly, of course, we know this intellectually when we hear it, but we don’t see it vividly. Now a person who realizes emptiness would have like a huge awareness of the interdependence, meaning what this thinking and meditating leads you to, is inevitably, oh, because more and more you think about how it causes and conditions, you of loosen your grip on real solid independent, solid out there, inherent existing from its own side, cupness. Which is how ignorance sees it now. And you kind of loosen your grip on that view, which is the main view we have, which causes to grasp at it.
Then what it leads you to, in other words, when you loosen your grip on the real solid independent cup, the conclusion is therefore it is empty of being an independent real solid inherent cup because it is nothing other than a bunch of causes and conditions. Mean they meditated on this for thirty years, know. So by understanding interdependence, by understanding dependent arising, it’s a very practical, affirmative way of looking into how things do exist in order to loosen the grip of the grasping, which leads you inexorably to the conclusion that therefore it is empty of being a real solid its own side cup ness. So as Lama Tsongkhapa says, by understanding dependent arising, what Lama Yeshe said is the king of logics to prove that everything is empty. Empty of being a solid, real, independent, out there cup ness.
Does that do anything? Well maybe it’s time to go, I don’t know. What do do you think? Yeah, go on one more question and we are done. Go on darling.
I just wanted to know if our Gurus and Lamas or Yeah, whatever. Sweetheart, according to where you are at in your path, one of the natural consequences of development on this spiritual path is you have clairvoyance, not only your own but others. But they are all going to deny it furiously, is why the Dalai Lama daily proclaimed he is an ordinary Buddhist monk. He is actually said to be by the other lamas, a fully enlightened Buddha. He’s said to be that.
But I mean, you can imagine if he starts saying that he was, he’s going to be in real trouble. We’re going to demand that he proves it. And then we’re to call him a fraud because he won’t. So you know, you’re probably playing safe by saying he’s a normal Buddhist monk. But really actually it’s because it’s just showing humility, because we kind of want to put everybody up there.
But of course it’s a natural consequence of your development as you go along. I’m sort of thinking that. Yeah, right. Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? Shall I sing a little prayer to finish?
Is that alright, may I do that? Okay, it’s a little prayer in Tibetan, two little prayers, the first one is basically saying, and I am being very paraphrasing here, that here we have all been sitting for two and something hours, and as many moments as there have been, there as many karmic imprints. Each thought that we have been having, every one of us listening to this stuff, including me, I am listening too. We put as many karmic seeds in our mind, imprints. So don’t think you are the same person that walks out that walked in two hours ago, you have done a whole pile of gardening, okay?
This is fantastic. So you kind of make this aspiration, this prayer I am singing, to dedicate, to make the wish that all these seeds we planted, all these virtuous seeds, may we nourish them from this moment forward by our continuous virtue, so it will ripen in the future in the development of our marvellous potential for the sake of all beings. And then the second little one is just making the aspiration that compassion continue to grow in our hearts. That’s all. Okay.
Okay, everyone. Thank you very much. Go buy your Christmas presents now. And also, all the money raised is helping me start it here. But also, people ask me, some people are my friends in America who ask me to do a tour of India Nepal, guided tour of India Nepal.
There’s a little sign up list there if you’re interested in getting a brochure, if you fancy going on a tour of India or Nepal with me. For two whole weeks, I’m not sure. So put your name on the list and ask the person, then you’ll get a little piece of paper about it. Then you’ll get a brochure in the mail and you can make a decision. It’ll be next October.
Okay? And all the stuff is for the sake of all the the prison project. So thank you very much everybody. I’m very happy. Thank you.